


Deja Vu

by lunaseemoony



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Cats, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3929380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunaseemoony/pseuds/lunaseemoony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mishap on the TARDIS that turns the Doctor into a cat triggers Rose's lost memory of a similar incident with her first Doctor when their bond faced a serious test.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [whatwecanfic](http://whatwecanfic.tumblr.com/)'s kitty!Doctor [prompt](http://whatwecanfic.tumblr.com/post/118416507352/someone-quick).

Rose winced as she pulled her limbs out of the pretzel they'd been twisted into after the TARDIS crashing threw her around the corridor like a pinball. She hadn't heard the ear-piercing clatter associated with ceramics breaking, but she saw its remains scattered onto the floor at her feet. She could have done without the tea, but she'd grown more than a little attached to the adorably distasteful mug in all of its bright yellow glory. She certainly could have done without hot tea slightly scalding the skin beneath her now soaked skirt.

She might have expected a bumpy ride, since the Doctor had warned her he was going to pop into an abandoned shipyard to pinch some parts for the TARDIS. He'd guaranteed her time to get a bite to eat and a little kip at least. The ship was ever in need of repair. And though the Doctor's ability to kluge it together using parts from all over time and space always amazed her, it was a task he spent a great deal of time on. Still, she was grateful for every spare minute of rest, no matter how much she cared for the TARDIS. After a smooth ride returning from their relatively harmless hiking trip, she didn't expect to be tossed around like a ragdoll the next time the Doctor fired up the TARDIS's engines. It was a wonder she still held any expectations while aboard the TARDIS. Maybe not after today, she thought as she dragged her battered limbs off the offending floor. At least it was right side up this time, she mused.

Rose liked to say that her trips to the console room after such crashes were to check on the Doctor to make sure he was okay. If she was being wholly honest though, she always enjoyed the display of Gallifreyan cursing (at least she assumed so, since it never translated), hammer-wielding, threatening, and pleading that followed the TARDIS “misbehaving.” Sure, she didn't want to see the Doctor injured. But he always fared being jostled around in flight much better than she did most days.

When she didn't immediately spot a furious Time Lord flitting about the console she cast an eye at the TARDIS doors. Closed. Her next thought was to duck her head below deck to see if he was already cursing and pleading with the TARDIS's engines. No Doctor. He couldn't have left the console room looking for spare parts already, could he? Actually, Rose considered this and concluded that it was most likely as she plopped herself onto the jump seat to wait for him. She decided to not touch anything and save herself from being lectured later.

And then she saw his face.

“Oh,” Rose cooed at a pair of round, deep brown eyes peering out from the engine deck.

She slipped off the jump seat to crouch to the floor and approach the little face that, now that she could hear better, she found was mewling at her. Wait, mewling? Rose ducked her head under the console and felt the honeycombed grating dig into her knees as she crawled up to the crevasse to find herself face to face with a cat.

“Well hello there gorgeous,” Rose called back, and watched the tiny creature clamber at the grating to pull itself up, slip, and flail on its little hind legs. “Oh, poor baby, are you stuck?” The feline's response was a low, throaty meow as it kicked its hind legs at the grating to gain a hold of it (and failed as it slipped further). “Come on then, I've got you.”

Rose curled her fingers at the cat to warn it of her intent before grabbing its ribs and lifting it out of the crevasse it was wedged into. She rolled onto her back with the cat tucked into her stomach. The little nook they hid away in was dimly lit, casting the cat's features in a blue glow as Rose held it – oh, _him_ – above her head. She'd come across a good number of strays on the Estate, but none of them looked quite like this one. He was a skinny streak of feathery brown fluff with fur on his head that couldn't be made to lay flat.

“How did you find yourself on the TARDIS, hmm?” she crooned as she picked herself and the cat up off the floor. “Stow yourself away? Need a ride? Hmm?” Rose sighed, giving in to the urge to rake her fingers through the striped field of down along his back.

They stood for a moment like this, Rose's fingers peeling away at his layers of cat down while finding a rhythm he liked. His stripes reminded her of ripples in a cup of hot cocoa. Before long, he was arching his back into her palm and rolling in her cradled arm. The hot cocoa gave way to a creamy white belly that he let her scratch for a moment before he leapt out of her arms and right onto the console.

“Oh no, the Doctor won't have that, mister,” Rose chided gently while the feline began to maneuver along the console, squeezing between levers, dancing through rows of buttons, and letting his white mitten paws skip over controls until he stopped at a monitor several feet away. “Oh come on now, the Doctor will be back any minute now. He doesn't even let _me_ have a go at the controls.”

But she'd be ignored. The cat instead purred at the monitor and swept his body across it, as if to mark whatever was displayed on the screen. Rose shook her head and scooped the creature back into her arms despite all of his wriggling protests. She imagined the sort of hell the Doctor would raise upon discovering her new companion, and it brought a dimpling smile to her face. Maybe that was a good thing. Mum had never let her keep a cat, didn't see the point in it when there were so many mangy strays around. But this one was different. Someone loved this well groomed and friendly cat. Did this person fall prey to those deep brown eyes that were tugging at her heart's every beat with their intense gaze? Or was it just her? God, they were so eerily familiar.

“Oh, now stop your protesting. You're not mucking up the TARDIS any more than she already is. You'll get me into so much trouble, sir,” Rose urged as she pulled him tight to her chest. “What is it you were looking at anyway?”

Rose squinted at the monitor. It wasn't unusual to find feeds of the ship's cams on display. The Doctor wasn't a peeping tom (she hoped), but did equip the TARDIS with a bit of security. There were never any legible time stamps on footage. But Rose didn't need it for what she was looking at. She saw herself, not more than a half hour prior to all of this, snooping around the Doctor's private study for her prized (and now destroyed) yellow mug.

“Oh, you're right, that is me,” Rose chuckled and scratched behind his ears. The cat replied with a wide-mouthed meow. “What? What is it?”

She pulled him up to her face as she continued to watch herself on the monitor. She could never help taking a quick peek at the Doctor's odd assortment of bits and bobs that decorated his studies. One thing had stood out more than others, a golden cat statue, comparatively innocuous sitting next to what she thought was a laser blaster of some sort. Rose buried her nose in the cat's fur and drank up her favorite scent, sandalwood, from the blanket of fur on his neck while watching her monitor self pick up the cat statue. She hadn't held it for more than a moment, just wanted to see it up close before setting it back down. The footage Rose picked up the yellow mug and proceeded to leave the study. Harmless.

“Funny sort of cat that wears cologne, aren't you?” Rose noted as she continued to watch the footage. The TARDIS switched cameras for her, following Rose to the galley where she'd made her tea. She watched herself being tossed around like a ping pong ball as the ship's flight went out of control.

Still, it didn't dawn on her until she felt her new companion roll in her arms again to expose his belly to her. Even as she reveled in the comforting aroma of sandalwood and swam in his big brown eyes it didn't click. It took her a good long moment of her palm on his slender chest for it to really set in. It should have been obvious from the start, feeling a _set_ of heartbeats in a cat.

“Doctor!” Rose squealed, dropping her feline companion onto the console. He hissed at her after digging his claws into a coral panel to catch himself. He looked up at her and emitted what Rose would guess was some manner of growl. “What, you're saying _I_ did this? What, just by picking up a bloody statue?” She put a hand to her hip as she watched the feline Time Lord begin to pace between the console controls. “How? You know what, I don't want to know. Just tell me how to fix it.” The Doctor sat down and twitched his fluffy tail at her. It may as well have been the tapping foot of an angry old man. “And how come the TARDIS won't translate? Isn't meowing a thing that cats do just for humans? She can't translate that?”

The Doctor's tail flitted back and forth, an agitated metronome at best. He turned to the time rotor, stretched against coral strut next to him, and meowed up at the rotor. The image displayed on the monitor before her changed to the calendar that the Doctor used to keep track of Rose's time line. She looked back over to the feline Time Lord and opened her mouth to speak, but her words were swallowed up by another one of his wide-mouthed meows. The TARDIS highlighted the current day, along with the next six after it.

“What's that mean? Seven days? Seven days until what? Is that a deadline? If I don't fix you before then, you'll regenerate? D'you have any idea how much pressure that is?” she blurted out at him. It sounded ridiculous even as she said it. The Doctor would probably be a lot more frantic if his life was a stake. He strutted up to her and stretched up against her, paws on her belly. Rose grabbed them and rubbed along their velvety pads. He purred at her. “You know I can barely understand you, yeah?” She rolled her eyes at him and caught his bum as he scrambled into her arms again and purred against her chest. “So it'll be fine in seven days?” He nuzzled her chest and meowed into her shirt. “Seven days with you like this? Oh, this is gonna be – ”

Before she could finish her sentence, one of the TARDIS doors flew open to reveal her mum leaning up against its frame. “Did I hear that right? Seven days? You've never so much as stayed a single day. And how long were you going to just sit there and not come up to the flat to greet your mother, Rose Tyler?”

“Mum?” Rose asked, mouth agape like a codfish.

“Last time I checked, that's me, yeah.”

Rose looked down at her furry companion, whose hackles were raised, and whispered, “emergency protocol?” She couldn't be certain whether his low, guttural meow was directed at her or her mother, maybe both. But with the Doctor incapable of flying his own ship, she guessed she had to be correct. Or maybe the TARDIS made the adjustments herself. Didn't matter. It was going to be an interesting week.

“And where's himself?” her mum asked, poking her head into the doorway just enough to peer around the console room. She'd never step foot inside the ship if she could help it.

“Ah, well..” Rose peered down at the feline next to her and twirled her finger in her hair. “He's not around. Not for a while, at least.” At least it was partly true. Still, fibbing to her mum even a little left a sour pit in her stomach, and it brought a grimace to her face.

Rose walked down the plank to the door and into her mum's open arms. There was nothing out of sorts with it, a plain old hug with her mum. She sighed into her shoulder. “Did you two have a fight, then? Is he dropping you off to cool down for a bit? He should, right git he is,” Jackie spoke into her hair.

“Well, we didn't..”

“No need to explain to me, sweetheart.”

“It's just a bit complicated right now, is all.” Rose pulled back and clasped the guardrail behind her, perhaps with the hope that it might save her from her own mum.

“Only now? Don't you think it would always be complicated with him? That's what they all say, you know. Coup-” Straight to the point as always.

“Mum!”

And as if on cue, he appeared at her feet, weaving between them and rubbing up against her ankles purring. If he was an ordinary cat, Rose would be flattered. She'd be marked, valued. What on Earth did it mean for the Doctor? How much of him was Time Lord, and how much was cat? As she looked down at the skinny ball of fluff at her feet, Rose thought that she might not want to know. Maybe it was best that she didn't.

“Ooh, who's your friend, Rose?” Jackie cooed, reaching for the Doctor.

The Doctor hissed and let his hackles stand on end, not too different from his Time Lord hair on an ordinary day. Maybe he looked a bit more like a porcupine ready to strike. Jackie was a bit persistent, and crouched down so she could reach for him. Her hand was promptly swiped, and she yanked it back.

“Doctor!” Rose admonished, looking down at the agitated ball of fur curled around her calf.

Jackie stood up and gaped.

“I mean, the Doctor wouldn't like you acting like that, eh, John?”

“That's the Doctor's cat? Thought he didn't like them,” she snorted. It was more than appropriate. Rose imagined the Doctor would rather suffer an allergy to bananas than keep a cat around the TARDIS. Rose shrugged and nodded. “So you're keeping it for him? He named the poor fellow John?” Her mum turned her nose up at the feline, who returned the sentiment with a warning growl and hiss. “What sort of name is that for a cat?”

“The Doctor likes to use it sometimes.”

They began to walk away from the TARDIS, stopping to let Rose lock the doors behind her. “So what's he eat then? Is he some sort of space cat? Does he eat pins, grass or tin cans and such? Haven't got any cat food, I can tell you that.”

Rose covered her mouth and snorted a laugh into her palm just as the Doctor stopped dead in his tracks behind her. She vaguely heard another growl, but kept walking. If he wanted to eat he'd have to either get something on his own or keep up with them. Rose's properly nourished smugness wasn't about to let the Doctor live this one down. Not too easily at least. Never mind that his current feline state was sort of – or completely, depending on who you ask – her fault.

In the end the Doctor got a plate of kippers, because neither Rose nor her mother wanted to venture to the store to pick up cat food. Rose wondered if the Doctor would actually eat it, anyway. He never struck her as being a finicky eater. But _she_ wouldn't eat cat food. She slipped the Doctor bits of her own supper. He'd spent the better part of it warming her feet with his tail wrapped around her ankle.

“You're really staying a week?” Jackie asked that night as they slumped on her couch nursing a bottle of cheap chardonnay. “Is it that bad between you two?”

Rose looked at her lap as she slumped further into the couch cushion. The Doctor's eyes were closed, but she knew better than to think he was asleep just because she'd spent the past half hour giving him a thorough grooming with her fingernails. It was all too easy to forget that inside that little fluffy feline were the mind and hearts of a Time Lord, especially when he offered up his sweet little mewls and fits of purrs in response to her ministrations. He reminded her that he was indeed awake by stretching and curling his digits against the couch cushion. His eyes fluttered open and gazed up into hers, seemingly awaiting her answer.

“No, course not, mum. Everything's great,” she replied with the truth.

It was. She'd never felt so alive, and even at the worst of times she found spare moments to grin and laugh. Rose would look back on these times and laugh for sure, she thought. The poor Doctor should have been beside himself, yet he'd been taking everything in stride, even when her mum persisted in her attempts at befriending him. He didn't blink when a water bowl was deposited on the floor for him. She never felt a strain in her relationship with the Doctor. She was grateful for it in times like this.

“But you haven't told him yet, have you?” Jackie probed.

Rose shot up, sending the Doctor to the floor with a crying hiss. He made a quick recovery, but didn't hop back into her lap as she might have expected. Instead he sat between Rose and her mum to stare at them both in turn. Rose's stomach lurched and her heart did a flip in her chest. She'd like to think (and hope) that this was a conversation that was only happening because her mum thought that the Doctor wasn't there.

“Or is that why you're here?” Jackie added, sympathy coating her voice like a bitter tea.

“No,” Rose croaked, and coiled her fingers tighter around her wine glass, feeling the sweat beading off her palm loosening her grip. “No, everything's fine, mum. Really.”

Neither of them were really buying it.

“But you know, I'm a bit knackered. Think I might turn in early, if that's alright?”

Her heart was pounding, and she set her wine glass down to avoid dropping it. She cast her mum pleading eyes, hoping she'd drop the subject for the umpteenth time. Only this time the one person she always excluded from the conversation – its subject – sat next to her with his wide saucer eyes cutting through all of her defenses. Now it seemed forbidden for her squirming fingers to reach over and scratch behind his ears.

“You know I'm here if you change your mind,” Jackie offered.

Rose didn't know feline facial expressions that well, if at all. But if she had to guess, she'd say the Doctor looked more than a little dejected at not being allowed in her bedroom that night. In the couple of years they'd spent together, they only slept in the same room when it was absolutely necessary. Their opinions on this matter proved to differ greatly, and the Doctor began to voice his shortly after she drifted off to sleep. Every few minutes, a pitiful muffled meow could be heard through her bedroom door.

It went on for nearly two hours before Rose's mum cracked the door open to peer in. “Rose, sweetheart, I'm letting him in so I can get some sleep. He's clearly besotted with you.”

Without another word the door creaked shut, and a furry figure wormed its way under Rose's duvet. Rose clutched her sheet to her chest. She was barely wearing more than knickers and a cami. The Doctor's cat eyes flickered green in the moonlight peeking in through her window. His face was so close to hers that she could almost feel the velvet of his pink nose against hers as the familiar scent of sandalwood spread over her like another soft blanket.

“She doesn't ask many questions any more, does she?” Rose noted. “And you know, it's not really fair. I wasn't going to bring it up at all. She's just looking after me, just being mum, you know? You can honestly just ignore – ”

He batted her face with his paw, covering her lips for a moment. His aim was off but his intent was clear. Or maybe it was a coincidence. For now she could take comfort in not having to talk to him. He wouldn't respond typically anyway. She still couldn't be certain just how sentient this Doctor was. She knew he must have been lonely, because he wasted no time in curling up to her chest, utterly disregarding the sheet as he wiggled under it. He made a little nook for himself out of the space between her shoulder and chin after nuzzling her face, tickling her cheeks with his spindly whiskers. As his tail flitted to and fro in a slow rhythm, Rose pulled the duvet back over them and closed her eyes. He let her massage his back, and lulled her into a deep sleep with a round of purring against her chest.

That night, with the Doctor curled safely in her arms, Rose had the most vivid dream she could ever recall.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mishap on the TARDIS that turns the Doctor into a cat triggers Rose's lost memory of a similar incident with her first Doctor when their bond faced a serious test.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [whatwecanfic](http://whatwecanfic.tumblr.com/)'s kitty!Doctor [prompt](http://whatwecanfic.tumblr.com/post/118416507352/someone-quick). This will have 3 chapters.

_That night, with the Doctor curled safely in her arms, Rose had the most vivid dream she could ever recall._

 

“We're just popping in and out, so don't wander off,” the Doctor warned as he stepped out after her, his toes already nipping at her heels to take hold of her excited pace.

“What are we here for then? Parts?”

“I'm returning something to a friend. And we haven't got much time. There's a storm brewing.” He quickly caught up, she found, and then jumped right ahead of her.

They both looked up to the sky at once. It was a perfectly clear and blue bowl as far as her eyes could see, just like her own. The Doctor might have known more about weather than she did, but she couldn't help but feel that if he was talking about a garden variety storm that he had to be off on this one. Still, the stinging headache threatening to split her skull down the middle was reminiscent of one that accompanies a storm front coming through, even if there weren't any clouds to be seen.

On the other hand, Rose felt squashed beneath a block of crystal towers jutting out from the vast desert sands. The ebony, indigo, and deep violet spires spiraled up to the blue sky, looking as though their pointed tips could pierce it. By Rose's estimate, no building was shorter than twenty stories, and most looked to be taller than 50. The brightest sight before her was the sky, blanketing bleak gray sands below. Even the throngs of pedestrians crowding the streets all wore dark tunics and dresses covering pale creamy skin. And she wondered if their appearance was the inspiration for their architecture. Even the children walked on stilt legs, with long swaying tree limb arms and slim heads that swayed on long necks in the hot breeze.

Oh, and was it ever hot. Sweltering. When Rose stepped out of the TARDIS she felt as though she was slipping into a car that had been baking in the sun, complete with hot air blasting in her face, drying out her skin. She was patting herself on the back for picking out a skirt and t-shirt to wear. But every time she looked at the Doctor in his typical jumper, jacket and denims, she could almost feel the heat attempting to strangle him. Not that he'd notice as he slipped right into a cloud of people.

“Then why not return right after?” Rose offered, skipping right over her doubts about the storm as she nabbed his jacket to keep up with him. “'cause my head's killing me, if it's a storm front.”

The Doctor cast a glance back at her as they neared a gap in the crowds. They were all traveling towards the city limits, opposite from the direction they were moving. “That's not the storm. That's the mind field.”

“What, we're walking towards a minefield?” Rose's eyes shot open completely. “I know you're not that daft.”

Though she couldn't see his face, she could practically _feel_ his eyes rolling at her as he shook his head. “Not, a minefield, a _mind_ field. The entire city is one big cloud.”

“There's no clouds in the sky, Doctor..”

Again, she could feel him rolling his eyes. “Slightly ahead of your time. Alright, think of it like the internet, only instead of connecting with wires and towers they use their minds as conduits.”

Rose looked around at the some of the people standing around looking at one another. None of them were speaking. The noises Rose heard could be attributed to the hovercraft engines above, the whistling of the sweltering wind, and hundreds of feet shuffling in the sand. They clearly were able to speak. Some of the children they passed were looking up at their mothers gadding on about their friends and games as any other children might. And their mothers answered just as human mums would. Perhaps it was up to personal choice, Rose mused.

“Like telepathy?” Rose asked.

He chuffed in the middle of a cough. “If you like. In this city, people mentally interface with devices that are wind powered. They direct the wind,” the Doctor continued.

“Oh, with that giant satellite, yeah? The one with the fan attached?”

When she was able to walk by his side she saw that he was grinning at her. “Yes, and that in turn is powered by – ”

“Solar panels!” Rose cheered, but then sobered. “But Doctor, if there are three suns in this system, why would they try to harness wind power when it'd be so much easier to use solar? The wind doesn't even seem that strong to me.”

“You wouldn't feel that. Besides. It's considered holy, a highly coveted resource.”

Rose paused. “Wait.. so, with all this heat there's no cold front. Even if there was.. that's a massive redirection of wind to interfere with.. You're not talking about a weather storm, are you Doctor?”

“Nope.” And before she could ask what sort of storm he was expecting, he canted his head forward and said with a smile, “Come on then, it won't wait for us!”

Rose followed the Doctor for another few blocks before they stopped at the bottom of one of the shorter indigo spires. He looked up and hummed at it before sauntering in to one of its revolving doors. Rose looked back at the busy streets behind them longingly before following him inside towards a set of glass elevators. She might have guessed that this was a library, as the first three floors were filled to the ceiling with books. Either it was closed or nobody here read books. Then the several floors after these contained offices, followed by a least a dozen floors dedicated to a mall. The few floors beneath the one they stopped at were different sorts of chapels. And finally, the top floor was a park, with the first patches of green that Rose spotted on this arid planet.

“This is gorgeous, Doctor!” Rose swooned. “We're meeting your friend here? D'you think he'd fancy a picnic?”

“She,” the Doctor corrected her with a soft smile.

Rose rolled a buzzing shiver down her spine and gulped down a grimace.

“No time for a picnic. She might enjoy one though, given different circumstances.”

“So why now?”

“This is the time that we agreed upon, is all. Events are always in flux. Just so happens that things changed since I saw her last. It's no trouble, as long as we get in and out in a timely manner.”

“Is this thing important, what you're returning?” Rose asked as they began strolling through the park space, admiring the various species of palm trees, desert flowers and cacti.

The Doctor shrugged his broad leather shoulders. “Not especially,” he fished through his jacket pockets to produce an old book.

“A _book_?”

He ignored her wrinkled brow. “I borrowed it with the intent to return it, Rose. I'm going to do just that.”

“Is it at least an important one?”

“It is to its owner.”

The Doctor walked up to one of the shorter trees, where a three-foot tower of stones was piled up to look like a pyramid. Bouquets of flowers sat at its base.

“Is that her?” Rose asked, lowering her tone.

He nodded and sighed after studying the tiny name scrawled onto the base rock. The Doctor didn't look surprised, however, just somber. She suppressed her curiosity and stood next to him, watching him close his eyes while she reached for his hand to wrap in both of hers. It was difficult to determine whether he knew beforehand if his friend would already be gone, since he expressed any grief with a silent stone face. After a couple of minutes had a small pit sinking in Rose's stomach, the Doctor reached forward and set the book down before the stone pyre.

“Yes, I'm well aware, we're leaving now. And I should tell you to do the same,” the Doctor muttered.

“Doctor?” Rose asked.

He turned around to spot a young woman not more than ten feet away watching them as if she knew they'd been there the entire time. Based on what she'd learned from the Doctor earlier, it wasn't a stretch to assume he could communicate with these people via the mind field. Answering aloud was probably more for her benefit than the woman's, who looked at Rose in the same way she might look at a wad of gum she was peeling off her shoe.

“I was instructed to stay to make certain the relics get destroyed,” the woman spoke aloud, looking at Rose.

“That's suicide, you know that, right?” the Doctor warned as he tugged at Rose's hand, moving quickly towards the glass elevator doors. “Who instructed you?”

The woman nodded at the little stone pyre they deposited the book at.

“Can't be. It was her life's work.”

“It's true.”

“Guessing she wants the book destroyed, too. What a shame. So much history, wasted.”

“They're dangerous.”

“Only to the wrong minds,” the Doctor argued. “Do the authorities know what you're doing? I'll bet they're counting on the structure of this building to hold up well enough for them to retrieve the relics.”

“They don't care. It's down to me. They've all but given up! Why do you think they're evacuating the city?”

“Because they made a mistake. You share this planet, with millions of other people. This city isn't the only one that believes the winds are sacred.”

A picture was beginning to form in Rose's mind, but she couldn't be certain. They stepped onto the elevator with the woman, whose gangly limbs shook as she growled at them. There was a lot that Rose didn't know about this desolate planet, but the situation that they found themselves in was not that different from one at home. Back home it would be oil rather than wind, with shorter and fatter people fighting the war, probably with different weapons. But maliciousness, anger and selfishness were easily translated across time and galaxies.

“I can, and I _will_!” the Doctor shouted as the elevator stopped. Evidently while Rose stared outside at a thick cluster of aircraft coming towards the city off the horizon, the Doctor and the woman continued their conversation quietly. “This war of yours has little to do with those relics. Studying and protecting them was your mother's lifelong work, and they're a part of history. I personally want nothing to do with them. But they might be all that's left after – you will want to have a piece of your culture for future generations.”

“Doctor.” Rose tugged at his jacket and nodded outside.

“We can make it. We'll just have to run,” he looked down at her, that mad grin beginning to curl his lips.

“Now you're talking!” Rose beamed back up at him as they broke into a run.

“How did you know she was my mother?” the woman interrupted, coming between the two of them to give the Doctor a hard look.

“Well, you're young. And stupid enough to stay behind when that's,” he nodded at the growing cloud of airships darkening the sky outside, “going to come down on you at any moment. You're obeying the wish of a deceased person, which means that they must have been close to you. You probably think you're two very different people. But you _look_ like her, and you're both stupidly stubborn, just like two other women that I know.” He looked around the woman at Rose, whose prideful grin only grew as she huffed and puffed.

They'd stopped on one of the chapel floors. The entire room was glass, from the painted windows and ceiling to the floor revealing the level beneath them. Rose was wary of running on the glass, but it felt thick enough to hold her weight. It certainly didn't stop the Doctor, who was running past the altar in the middle of the chapel to one of the rectories beside it. He ducked beneath an arch and stopped at a little alcove in the back of the room. In it sat three little golden statues. They each sat in their own little glass cases. One was of a cat, another of a fire, and the third appeared to be a sculpture of wind. The Doctor scooped up the wind and fire statues, and nodded to Rose to grab the third.

“You're going to get yourselves killed!” the woman shouted at them.

“Is that why you want them destroyed?” Rose huffed. “Why did you lie?”

The woman followed them as they broke back into a run. She sent chills down Rose's spine. She could have just run, could have let it go. But she followed them. Yet she wasn't willing to fight for her cause as most of the opposition in their travels thus far had been. She considered the possibility that these people were peaceful. But as they ran, and the woman's eyes kept falling on the relics, hints of devotion glistening her eyes, Rose also thought that maybe she cared more about her mother's cause than she let on.

They raced as the sky darkened outside not with clouds or night but with more and more aircraft with each passing second. They were overhead now, and Rose began to calculate how long it had taken them to reach the building from the TARDIS. If they ran really quickly and the ships held off for another five to ten minutes they might make it back in time. But what about the woman? Was she really willing to die to keep anyone else from accessing the golden relics? Were they really that horrible?

Rose's estimates proved to be off as they neared the awaiting elevator. The first air raid struck as she watched it rise back up to their level. A long whistle sounded just before an ear-piercing, thunderous crash outside. It sent the elevator crashing to the ground as the entire building trembled and swayed. The Doctor planted his feet and came to a halt, but Rose and the woman both fell to their knees. Rose's relic slipped from her hands and its case shattered on the floor. The Doctor pointed to a sky bridge and began to take off as Rose turned to pick it up.

“No!” the woman screamed as Rose's fingers clasped the golden cat.

Nothing happened. At least this is what Rose _thought_. She heard two more shattering crashes that sounded just like the first, and watched the fire and wind statues falling to the floor. The Doctor must have let go, his arms still at his sides like a pair of wings ready to fly. But when she blinked, he was gone. And all that was left behind was a pile of his clothes on the floor. Rose stood up and ran to the spot.

“Doctor!” she screamed, as if crying out his name would make him reappear.

Her heart sank to her feet as she looked around. The aircraft around them weren't going to wait for her to figure out where her companion went, hovering overhead. They were very much a storm, the Doctor was right. They made up a giant cloud as dark as their intent must have been. Another set of bombs crashed to the ground, and the ceiling above them shattered. Rose became a turtle, hugging her knees on the floor on top of the Doctor's clothes. A downpour of shards and specs of glass rained down on them for a moment. A force pushing up at Rose's belly reminded her that she needed to keep moving, no matter what happened to the Doctor. She couldn't remember the last time her heart felt so heavy, when she felt like her stomach was about to be torn asunder.

Except that last bit was real. Rose clutched her stomach, and felt scratches slashing her wrists. She yelped and jumped up. Beneath her was a skinny, short-haired chocolate brown cat with blue eyes the color of a sky after a storm. They were an all too familiar blue. Blue.

“Doctor!” Rose gasped, and clapped her hands over her mouth.

Her new feline companion shook himself as he got to his four feet. Once he did, he yowled at her and nipped at her ankle. Rose jumped, and when she didn't immediately move, he nipped at her ankle again. He picked up a corner of his jacket in his mouth and mewled. His valuables. Of course. Rose threw his coat on, letting its worn warmth weigh on her shoulders.

“We've got to keep moving and get to the ground!” Rose shouted as her eyes fell on an aircraft right outside the building. Its pilot was looking right at them with a sickening grin on his face.

They made for the sky bridge, leaving the rest of the Doctor's clothes and the other two relics behind. The feline Time Lord looked back several times as they ran, but Rose urged him forward. When they were out in the open air, aircraft buzzing around them and making Rose feel like she could fall to her death, she scooped up the Doctor and tucked him under the jacket. They ran across the sky bridge, and Rose only lost her footing once to the draft created by the raiding aircraft. In the next building, the woman directed them towards another sky bridge that appeared to move further downward. They crossed two more before reaching the ground, where there was already building debris, dust, fallen hovercraft, and screaming civilians to wade through.

Rose looked to the Doctor, but he only looked up at her and offered her a low, gravelly meow. Not remotely helpful. She'd have thought the woman would have disappeared by now and fended for herself, but she merely stood next to Rose looking every bit as helpless. Her heart might have been pounding in her ears too. The Doctor buried his face beneath Rose's chest, and nudged at her ribs just as she began to cough. Rose sucked in a breath of dust and sand that nearly had her doubling over in coughs. In no uncertain terms he was telling her to cover her face. A bit late. But better late than never. She lifted the collar of her shirt to her face and started to run in the direction with less aircraft raining down bombs to the ground.

Rose focused on only two things: running as quickly as she could and holding on to the Doctor. Everything else could be worked out once they reached safety. Every few seconds another bomb landed. One sent her crashing into the sand, nearly crushing the furry Time Lord in her arms. It certainly hurt her knees, which crackled as she landed. But the Doctor was safe. They got back up and kept running, running, running. She stopped only to cough, nearly giving up a lung to rid herself of the dust and sand. At one point Rose felt like she'd breathed in glass and fire.

They only stopped when Rose crashed right into a tent. They'd found an encampment. And when Rose looked back and saw only a giant cloud of black dust on the horizon she realized they'd been running for a couple of miles. The woman, somebody whose name she didn't even know, had run with her, and was now rolling on the sand clutching her sides for air. Rose dropped the Doctor, who landed on his feet, so she could double over. She took heaving breaths, heart still sprint in her blazing chest. Her head felt like a bowling ball wanting to drag her down to the ground. And she was ready to let it, until a canteen was thrust in her face.

Rose accepted the canteen without looking up, and nearly emptied it before she considered her new companion. She was all but passed out on the ground, so Rose had to help her with it. A long, drawn out meow reminded her that her feline friend was probably thirsty too. Rose quirked her nose at the thin neck of the canteen. She crouched down in front of the little Doctor and poured a bit of water into her palm. She watched him lean forward, and then felt his rough little tongue lapping at her skin. It was cool, just like his hands would be normally.

“Thanks,” Rose rasped as she stood up, face to face with an elderly man with pale wrinkled leather-like skin and ash white hair.

At least she could take comfort in spotting everyone around her being much in the same condition. Rose moved to a tent and plopped herself down under its awning. It was in the sun, so the sand still baked her thighs, but it was far better than running for her life. The woman they'd run with flopped on the ground next to her. Rose dropped the golden cat relic in the sand, and watched the Doctor bat at it with an outstretched paw. He growled at it before huffing and taking off for a darkened corner of the empty canvas tent behind them. Rose sat and rested, watching droves of people pour into the encampment for at least a half hour before she felt well enough to speak again.

“Where is this?”

“Encampment. They set it up a few days ago in preparation for the evacuation,” the woman answered from the ground, looking up at Rose with bleary red eyes.

Rose looked back at the city, soon to be ruins by her estimate. “Is there anyone back there fighting? Countermeasures? Sabotage?” The old man from before padded up to them, nodded at Rose, but then lowered his head. It was the closest indication she'd get to a 'no.' “Anything?” He shook his head. “Why?”

“I know it's difficult for you, having not been raised in Alnaia, but we're a peaceful people,” the elderly man retorted in a calm, smokey voice as he sat down in front of them. “My name is Liam.”

Though the man's name sounded plain enough, perhaps even borrowed from Earth, his home sounded beautiful. It looked beautiful. And Rose wondered with a pang coursing through her aching muscles how much longer the place would stay that way.

“My name is Maya,” the woman Rose had been with for at least a half hour finally chirped. Though frankly, Rose and the Doctor usually made introductions first. It couldn't be helped that they were in a hurry.

“I'm Rose, and that there's the Doctor,” Rose gestured to her chest and then the feline Doctor hidden somewhere in the dark. “And he's not normally like this.”

Rose then heard hissing in the distance behind her.

“I told you to leave them alone! You didn't listen! That was _your_ choice, not mine!” Maya snapped into the dark. They were communicating silently, she guessed. So at least he was still of sound mind, Rose thought.

“Maya!” Liam barked.

“It's the truth! Mum died for those dreadful things!”

Liam sighed. “And I'm not sad to see you alive.”

“Is this your dad?” Rose looked to Maya and asked.

The two of them looked to each other, exchanging a silent conversation before Liam shrugged and nodded with Maya. “You could say that,” Liam replied. “Suffice to say I knew Maya and her mother. Maya's mother did her work to preserve our culture,” he told Maya as he looked at Rose.

“Nobody cares about our culture anymore, Liam! Can't you see that? That's what caused all this. Our government turned its back on our culture. They don't care anymore,” Maya snapped again.

Rose watched another silent conversation transpire between Liam and Maya. Her eyes traveled back and forth while glares were exchanged, along with huffs and folded arms. She realized then that if the two had any sort of heartfelt reunion, it was silent, with thoughts shared between them. That is, if they actually did. Though the air was dry and hot like an oven, it was still thick with tension between Liam and Maya. She looked on for a few minutes before her eyes grew tired and she interrupted.

“Sorry, d'you mind telling me what happened?”

“Alnaia became greedy, is what happened,” Liam answered, his voice as calm and grainy as the sands beneath his crossed feet.

“With the wind,” Rose offered.

He nodded. “Indeed. But also with the mind field. We were using the satellite to direct wind to our city to power and support our growing technology.”

Rose peered around to the black cloud of dust on the horizon again. A clearer picture was beginning to form in her mind. “Let me guess.. the others, your enemies, they can't use telepathy or the mind field, can they?”

“Like you, yes,” Maya answered, looking Rose up and down like she was a piece of livestock. It was working at Henrik's all over again.

“So you lot are the reason for my headache? I'm gonna venture a guess that your neighbors don't appreciate that if they're passing through.” Liam nodded. “Sorry, I'm not being rude, really. You say you're a peaceful bunch. Even if you're not the only ones who believe the wind is holy, you're messing with nature by redirecting it like that.”

Liam sighed. He didn't disagree. “We made mistakes. By the time anyone expressed any desire to fix it, the Union was already threatening to attack. We're not built for warfare.”

“The Union?”

“An alliance of the surrounding territories.”

She couldn't bring herself to voice to the idea, but Rose considered the distinct possibility that the Alnaians were the bad guys in this war. And the Doctor was in no position to argue that with her, at least not while he was sulking back in the tent.

Liam continued before she could think on this further. He nodded at the fallen cat relic. “Those relics are an example of how our people first used telepathy. We changed the world around us for the better. Our gifts were used sparingly, for everyone's benefit, not just Alnaians. There used to be many more relics. Those three, now one I suppose, is all that remains.”

Rose paused for a minute, staring at the little cat statue now partly buried in the sand. “Again. Not being rude, but what good does it do turning people into cats? Are they.. are they sacred in your culture, cats?”

“Not really. Mum said that our ancestors believed they were a symbol of good luck and good fortune. The only people that ever used them were couples about to be married.”

Rose couldn't bite back a snicker. “That's not a marriage thing, is it?”

Liam and Maya looked to each other and shrugged. “I suppose not. But it's also not supposed to turn anyone into a cat, either.”

“So what do I do?”

“I am sorry friend, but we have more pressing concerns right now. I would like to help, but..”

Rose waved her hands and stood up. “No, I totally get it. How can I help?”

She put herself to work as a nurse, roaming the camp assisting the elderly, the infirm, and the wounded. She invited the Doctor to come along, but received only cold silence as her answer. He sulked in a corner of the tent staring off into the distance. When Rose accused him of feeling sorry for himself, he hissed and swatted at her. She decided to move on and help without him. But after a while, Rose gained furry little shadow. Eventually she learned that the TARDIS was on the other side of Alnaia, that she'd run in the opposite direction that they needed to. But there was no helping it. Working herself to the bone felt all too familiar. It was a comfort, and gave her the chance to think up a plan. If only she had. Long after the three suns had set, there was still a lot of work to be done. The refugees still had to eat. So it came down to Rose and a ragtag crew to cook. And maybe Rose was a bit too focused on all of the tasks she put herself to, but when all that remained was to sleep, she still came up empty.

Rose had the rather fortunate distinction of being the off-worlder that nobody wanted to sleep next to, not to mention being a stranger in a seemingly tight community. So she had a tent all to herself. She sat at its entrance under the awning picking at a large plate she'd made for herself and the Doctor. He sat in front of her, tail swatting at some invisible irritation behind him as he helped her with more than his share of the food. It was just as well. With all of the heat baking her now sandpaper skin and drying out her throat she had little interest in food, but did have a seemingly unquenchable thirst. She was quickly learning that she was ill suited to desert climates.

“I'm sorry for what I said earlier,” Rose muttered as she tied the tent flaps closed for the night. “I mean, I'm sure this,” she gestured at the Doctor's feline form (cute as he was), “bothers you. But it's the war, isn't it? And your friend?”

The Doctor's ears peeled as he replied in a quick meow. She couldn't be certain what that meant, but his sinking eyes, same as when he first told her about the Time War, were very clear. When Rose sat down on an afghan that she'd found he rested his head on her thigh and closed his eyes. She couldn't help but just watch him for a minute. His fur was the same shade as his short hair, eyes the same color. He was simply trapped in a smaller, four-legged body, she reasoned. Her wrist danced over his neck and back, fingers aching to comb through his sleek coffee brown fur. She gave him a couple of testing scratches behind his ears, which were met with little head cants. But when her fingers crept to his back he bore his teeth at her and hissed.

“Sorry, it's just.. you're really cute, you know that? I'm not gonna sit here and hold your paw. That's ridiculous,” Rose complained. “You're just mad because you know you'd like it.”

The Doctor chuffed at her and got up to return to his sulking corner. He could complain all he wanted, she still thought it was cute how he kept his tail raised high as he trotted over to his little corner. His feline walk wasn't that different from his Time Lord one, feet falling heavy like an ogre's.

“Really? You're serious? I've spent the past.. I dunno how many hours trying to figure out how we're supposed to get you back to normal, and you're giving me the cold shoulder?” She hugged herself. “I'm sorry Doctor. Is that what you'd like to hear? I am.” She saw him looking at her in the dark, eyes glowing and blinking at her. “I didn't wake up this morning with the idea of ruining your plans, I'll say that.” She let her shoulders sulk, and winced. Only now was she beginning to feel the weight of her own wounds. “My shirt's ripped, it's so hot I feel my insides turning to oatmeal, and all of my cuts have sand in them.. including the scratches you gave me earlier. It's like you're here but you're not, Do-”

Before she could finish, he was at her side, then in her lap, and pawing her hands down to examine them. He found his handiwork and covered it with his chin as he mewled at her, tucking his ears a little.

“It's okay, I know you were scared. I would be too.”

He pawed at her hand until it rested against his little chest as he curled into a ball in her lap. His whiskers tickled her wrist like tiny little feathers as he set a tongue to her scratches. Rose wanted to close her eyes, but couldn't peel her eyes off of the sight of him. It was the same as always when she hurt herself. His quiet little huffs and mumbled meows weren't any different from his typical chiding, even if it was his fault this time. It was perfectly innocent for the feline Doctor to be lapping at and kissing her skin, and thank goodness for that. He was gentle, even with his paws keeping her hand in place with its soft pink pads hugging her fingers.

“Was this war a fixed event? Did it have to happen?” Rose asked, but received no discernible answer other than a quiet meow against her hand. “But you still came to drop off that book anyway. Why, Doctor? I mean, isn't it burnt to a crisp by now?”

The Doctor must have been ignoring this, as he just looked up at her with a blank stare and meowed. When she didn't answer straight away his eyes began to dart all over her. And she realized he was looking for more cuts and scratches. “Well, I've got this one on the back of my neck.” He drummed on her stomach with his white mitten paws, a cue for her to lie down. Rose fixed her hair into a loose bun before complying. “You don't have to do this, you know. It can wait..” she murmured as he maneuvered behind her. Though she hated to admit it, her hand did feel better. But it was more from his tender care than any real first aid. Still, it was nice. He was more like himself, Rose thought. She ought to throw him a bone (or catnip). He nipped at her shoulder before ignoring her words and carefully cleaning the sand off her cuts.

She opted to not share how much she was getting used to his little snide nipping and muttered meows of contempt. It was all very _him_. Even the way he ignored her hands clutching her stomach as he made to give it the same treatment was very much his way. There was no fighting him when he wanted to do something, or when he thought he was right. Rose lifted the hem of her shirt to expose just her midriff, and gasped when his whiskers tickled her skin. He flicked the tip of his tail to and fro as he waited for her to stop sucking in her gut. Modesty was the least of his concerns, she realized, and closed her eyes to give in.

“Can I..” Rose reached out after he sauntered up to her face and plopped himself down a few feet away.

This time she actually saw his eyes roll. She could swear by it. But he moved to lie down in front of her all the same. The Doctor might have been humoring her as he let her fingers curl into his short lawn of fur. But a few minutes later after Rose had successfully worked all of the sand out of his fur and he was lying on his side purring into her palm, he definitely wasn't humoring her.

“Promise me we'll figure something out, Doctor,” Rose whispered onto his warm, flat head.

His silky chocolate fur warmed her chapped lips. It brought the same old scent of dusty leather to her nose, a comfort she didn't know she needed until it was trickling into her senses. The Doctor's response was an indiscernible, gravelly meow.

“I'm just.. what about the TARDIS? What if it got bombed too? I was thinking.. would the answers to your problems have been in that book? Or maybe in her library? What if it burned down?”

The Doctor's hiss and nip at her hand was a good enough of a cue for her to drop the conversation. Nothing would come of a one-sided discussion anyway, she realized. But she couldn't say that aloud. It wasn't the poor Doctor's fault that he couldn't speak to her, as much as she was coming to enjoy his little mewls. And she might have been just a bit too eager to earn more of his purrs that sent little tremors down her spine. She could never run her hands down his stomach when he was himself, not scratch at the little ridges of his bare spine. And he certainly wouldn't be able to so innocently voice to her how much he enjoyed it. Hopefully soon he'd be back to himself, and she'd be blushing every time he touched the back of her hand or neck from then on. One night, Rose allowed herself. Eventually his purring traveled straight from her hand to her chest, and she hummed back at him. She just wished the pull of sleep wasn't so strong so she could live in the moment longer. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mishap on the TARDIS that turns the Doctor into a cat triggers Rose's lost memory of a similar incident with her first Doctor when their bond faced a serious test.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [whatwecanfic](http://whatwecanfic.tumblr.com/)'s kitty!Doctor [prompt](http://whatwecanfic.tumblr.com/post/118416507352/someone-quick).

_Hopefully soon he'd be back to himself, and she'd be blushing every time he touched the back of her hand or neck from then on. One night, Rose allowed herself. Eventually his purring traveled straight from her hand to her chest, and she hummed back at him. She just wished the pull of sleep wasn't so strong so she could live in the moment longer._

 

 

“Five more minutes, mum,” Rose mumbled into her arm when she felt a tugging at her ankle. Maybe if she sounded sleepy enough her mum would leave her be and not throw up the duvet as she so loved to do. But the tugging on her ankles grew in persistence the more Rose groaned and buried her head in her arms, to the point of biting. Wait. Biting? “Doctor?”

Rose peeled back the Doctor's thick leather jacket they'd been using as a blanket to find a skinny chocolate cat nipping at her ankles. The moment she picked her head up he was darting towards the closed tent flap and began pacing laps in front of it. She'd vainly hoped that a night's rest (she wouldn't call it sleep with sand permeating every surface of her skin, burrowing into places she didn't want to think about) would have cured him of his feline ailment. Not only was he still a cat, the Doctor seemed to sink further into his furry persona. He danced along the tent flap, and made a pass at rubbing at his he cast a few quick glances her way.

“What is it?” Rose sighed. “And why can't it wait? I'm _exhausted_ , Doctor.”

As usual, cat or not, Rose's plight didn't factor in to the Doctor's plans. She was certain then that if he didn't have any he wouldn't be so agitated waiting for her to move and open up the tent. How long had he been watching her before finally deciding to wake her up? She entertained the idea that he didn't get more than a few winks of sleep, that he'd spent the past several hours plotting. He may have been trapped inside a little feline body, but the mind inside was still very much his by all appearances. She wouldn't blame the Doctor for being eager to figure out how to get himself back to normal. He'd been the one to assuage her worries the night before, but Rose was gathering right then that he was no less eager for it.

“Alright, alright. Hang on a mo', will ya?” Rose grumbled in the midst of a creaking stretch.

Top on the list of her priorities would have been finding someplace to bathe and wash off all the sand. And second would have been helping the people of Alnaia. Rose would have thought the Doctor would share this interest. But he'd been all too keen on getting off the planet. The only reason they were still here, Rose reminded herself, was she ran in the wrong direction when they were trying to flee the bombs. That and they didn't – well, _she_ didn't – know how to fix him.

“Alright here,” Rose said while peeling back the tent flap.

The Doctor leaped out and dashed away before Rose could even get a good look outside. She stepped out after grabbing his jacket along with the cat relic, and found the camp barely stirring. The sun hadn't even fully risen on the horizon yet, so there wasn't much light to see with. Still, there were a few early birds wandering around. One of them was Maya, filling canteens from a giant cask nearby. The Doctor rushed right past her, charging towards the edge of the encampment.

“Doctor, where are you going?” Rose shouted while tearing after him.

“He's going back into the city,” Maya answered in a low, calm tone.

Rose couldn't be certain if this was her translating the Doctor's thoughts or guessing, even when she saw he was indeed heading towards Alnaia. “Doctor, just stop for a second!” she beckoned, seeing not much more than a dark tail standing up in the air until he stopped and turned around. In the dim dawn light she saw his eyes glimmering and glowing, and by all appearance glaring for making him stop. “Let's just think about this. It's not safe, with those ships and all the bombs. You'll get yourself killed!”

Maya brought her finger to the air and then her lips before she slowly retorted, “He's thinking that the ships have since stopped bombing. Given that, my thinking is there's a small window of time before the Union will return with foot soldiers to take over the city. But that doesn't mean you should go, Doctor. That book is supposed to be buried.”

“You mean that's what you _want_ , for it to be buried,” Rose shot back at her.

Maya thrust her hand on her hip and scowled. “That book is dangerous! Those relics are dangerous! You've seen first hand what they do!”

“I saw first hand what the actions of your people did, how dangerous _that_ was, Maya. Maybe it wasn't your fault, but are you really going to make that argument given what happened yesterday? Besides, it doesn't matter in the end how dangerous it is. We still need it to get the Doctor back to himself, unless you've got another way that you haven't told us about.”

The Doctor sauntered up to Rose and weaved between her legs, purring and rubbing his belly on her calves. She guessed that this idea was met with his approval. Even through it all, Rose still felt bad for the Alnaians, having to flee from their homes and watching them be destroyed in a matter of minutes. It had to be a bit heartbreaking for the Doctor to watch, knowing there was nothing he could do about it. It had to remind him a little of his loss. No wonder he was frustrated.

“Don't think you're off the hook, mister,” Rose chided the feline at her feet. “You're not going there alone.” She looked at the horizon. Where there were once towering spires piercing the sky there was a sickening black smog and a mountain of rubble. “That's not safe, going it alone. I'm coming with you.”

The Doctor looked up at her and pulled back his lips for an angry, drawn out meow that broke into just a hint of a hiss. He really wanted to do this by himself, in his little feline body? He must have lost his mind, Rose thought. Rose crouched down in an attempt to reach him at his level. Those same stormy eyes glared back at her, and she could hear him warning her to not be so stupid. Rose realized then that even if he was in his normal form that she'd still ignore him and press on after him.

“I'm coming with you, so you can stop nipping at my ankles, you stubborn thing,” Rose huffed, and started walking. She looked back and saw him parked on the sand with a furrowed brow and short little meows directed at her. “You coming then?”

The Doctor replied with a throaty groan and tore after her. Rose looked back at Maya and waved. There was no reason for them to return if they could get to the TARDIS. But she couldn't be certain. Nothing had really gone as planned since they'd landed. Not that it was any different from any other plans they normally made. Maybe they were destined to not have plans at all. Perhaps it might be better to simply wander with no expectations so they wouldn't be crushed under disappointment and danger. They walked side by side as they always did, no matter that one of them did so on four legs. The Doctor still exuded the same purposeful energy that he always did, even in feline form. His calm presence was still a comfort, even if it was furry and honestly quite cute. Their trek to Alnaia was quiet, stifled by the clouds of dust, smoke and smog that grew thicker the closer they got to the city.

The Doctor stopped as they hit the first major road. They day before when they were entering the city and Rose was marveling at its splendor they were surrounding by spires that she felt could crush her. But their glittering crystal from the ground to their pointed peaks on the top were so pristine. The roads were all clear of the gray sands, jutting up against the sides of all the buildings, but they never got in. The peace that washed over Rose in the chapel and garden belied the peril the Alnaians faced. They'd built such a beautiful city, and it was reduced to rubble in merely a few hours, if not a few minutes. Rose looked down at her furry companion, who'd since sunk to the ground, ears folded over, with his legs and tail tucked under his bum.

“It's too much like home, isn't it?” Rose murmured. He looked up at her with heavy hooded eyes, almost looking as though he was searching for something to say. All he managed was a shallow, crying meow. “Come here,” she cooed as she scooped him up into her arms. He buried his head in her chest and squeaked before she hushed him and brought him in close. She might have expected him to act strong and reject her comforts. But he accepted them, and leaned into her cradling arms. “You're not alone, remember Doctor? You've got me. And these people, they have each other. They survived.”

Be that as it may, the city of Alnaia lay in ruins, beneath mounds of crystal shards. Rose looked at the road ahead and grimaced, thinking of her feet being ripped open by glass. The Doctor wasn't walking in this, she quickly concluded. If she had reservations about walking through the city in her shoes, she certainly didn't want the Doctor's soft kitty feet trying it. He fought her on this, scrambling in her arms as she made to move again. In the middle of it, he managed to fish his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket that she wore in his stead.

“Oh, you can't be serious. Doctor, if you resonate that crystal into small enough pieces we could inhale them,” Rose cautioned. She had to admit, he did look cute with it between his teeth like a dog with a bone. “Unless you've got a super heat setting on that thing, we're just going to have to be careful.” He growled low into her arm. “You're only mad 'cause you know I'm right. I think being trapped in there is getting to your head. Now give me that so I can put it away.”

The Doctor gave up the sonic but also nipped her. She opted not to scold him for it. If she was in his position, stuck in a tiny body that couldn't do what she was used to she'd feel incredibly frustrated. So she couldn't fault him... much. Rose stepped lightly, feeling with each tip toe that this was an atrociously dangerous idea. But if there was another way, the Doctor would have thought of it already. So they pressed on, the Doctor guiding Rose with nudges of his nose on her arm. She thought she might have recognized the building they entered the day before, but in the wreckage each ruined tower looked practically identical compared to the next. Fortunately the Doctor still had a good memory and at least a good enough sense of direction. He leaped from her arms, startling her so much that she gasped and froze watching him, hoping he wouldn't land on any glass. He headed into the rubble straight away without casting a look back.

“Doctor, wait! It's not safe!” Rose shouted.

But it was too late. She tried to follow him, but the moment she took a step onto the mountain of crystal, a large pane shattered under her foot, barely grazing her ankles. The Doctor was creeping up the pile, tip-toeing along with his tiny cat paws barely tapping the fractured lanes of crystal in the rubble. It frustrated Rose to no end, but the Doctor was the perfect size at the moment to conquer this artificial mountain. Still, it didn't keep her from worrying or holding her breath as he slipped a little every now and again. At least the gardens they visited were close to the top of the spire. In theory the Doctor wouldn't have to dig. And though the intense heat from the bombs fused large portions of buildings together, the part that the little Time Lord was gently nosing through was intact. Rose watched for several agonizingly long minutes, sometimes losing sight of her coffee brown cat behind chunks of rubble, before she saw a little fluffy dot descending the crystal rubble mountain with a book clutched in his teeth. He became a snake, slithering down the panes of crystal with his haunches low. With measured steps and careful sliding he managed to make it most of the way down the rubble pile. About six feet from the bottom he reached a junction of several large shards surrounding him. Rose watched him calculating, stepping back once or twice before sticking his neck out to take a look at the ground. Surely he wasn't considering...

“Doctor!” The Doctor's jacket fell off Rose's shoulders as she made a big leap to catch the Doctor mid jump but missed him by several feet.

He landed on good clean ground, but not before glancing a shard of glass on his front leg. The Doctor's crying wail in pain tore right through her ears and went straight to her heart. He fell onto the gray sand with a rag doll flop. It didn't keep him down for long. Before Rose could get to him he was rising off the ground and straightening himself up, rolling back his haunches. But he didn't take more than two steps before yelping in pain. Still, he tried a couple more before collapsing back down to the sand.

“Stop stop stop,” Rose pleaded as she made her way for him. “Please,” she urged before scooping him up into her arms and kneeling to the ground. He continued scrambling, kicking and pawing at her as she struggled to get a good hold on him. His head was darting around madly as if searching. He's looking for the book, she thought to herself. “Hold on, Doctor, you're injured. The book can wait.”

Against the Doctor's hissing and growling, Rose lifted his paw to take a look at his leg. She forced herself to think through her heart choking up her throat and her lungs aching for relief. And it was difficult to see when she was dizzy, but she took a quick breath and closed her eyes before truly taking a look at the feline Doctor's wound. Of course she was only guessing at what she saw. She was no physician or veterinarian. The Doctor had a deep, roughly six inch gash on his leg. But by all appearances it didn't hit a major artery. It was, however, bleeding profusely. So with wildly trembling hands Rose set down the Doctor in her lap and threw off her shirt. His eyes burst open and she stared slack-jawed up at her while she folded her shirt into a wrap. The Doctor was obedient this time as she lifted up his paw again. She bit down on her lip so hard that it bled. The bitterness it left on her tongue kept her sharp so she could pay attention to what she was doing. The task took her a few minutes, the first couple of which were wasted because she realized her shirt was too thick for the Doctor's little leg. She ripped it in half and carefully wrapped it around his wound. All the while he was silent except for a couple of hushed mewls into her wrist alongside his little cat kisses.

“Idiot,” she sniffed after bringing him up into her arms. He rested his head on her shoulder and mewled into her neck. “Frightened me half to death, you stupid plum.”

She supposed the whimpering meow that he offered her next was meant to be an apology. At least she hoped it was. The Doctor wasn't one to apologize very often. But he also wasn't normally so reckless. She nuzzled his soft belly and breathed in his dusty leather scent. She'd be lying if she said feeling his sleek fur on her bare skin didn't feel divine, even if hugging him was merely to celebrate that he was still alive. If she closed her eyes she could just scarcely imagine it being the _real_ him she was hugging. He even had the two hearts patting her shoulder to remind her that it was still him in there, still her Doctor. She told him he was going to be perfectly alright, and he reassured her with a few shallow purrs. But the statement was more for her own sake than his. He'd been stuck like this for nearly a day, and seeing him hurt clinched her desire to have him back to normal.

Rose picked up the book the Doctor found and sat it in her lap. He sat in front of it on her thighs with his tail swishing against her bare stomach as he eagerly nudged at her hands with his velvet nose. It was in tatters, and missing a cover. Most of it was shredded in one way or another, leaving out paragraphs and even some whole pages, Rose found as she let her fingers dance over the ruined book. When she'd thumbed through about half of the book he held her hand down with his good paw.

“What, you can read like this?” Rose asked. She wouldn't get a reply, not even an eye roll. The Doctor's ears twitched back and forth as he leaned into the book. Feeling a bit closed off, Rose decided to read it aloud to herself. “'...the cat relic. I'm close to giving up on this one, as there's so little information to glean from it. It hasn't been used in centuries, by my estimation. What I do know is it's meant for good luck. I haven't been able to verify the veracity of this claim, but I certainly don't feel any luckier than when I came into possession of it. I can touch it, play ball with it even. It won't make a difference. Though the priests tell me otherwise, as far as I can tell it's perfectly harmless.'”

The Doctor growled and looked up at Rose with a twisted face, his jowls wrinkling as he meowed at her. She flipped a few pages and shrugged. The Doctor leaned in closer, perhaps skimming over everything as she turned the pages. He stopped her again after another ten pages.

“'Some offworlders made a pass at stealing the relics. I'd have reported this earlier, but I have been monitoring them for the past week. We already knew that the mind field has a significantly different effect on offworlders than it does on Alnaians. After touching the wind relic, two out of the three men got caught up in a mild sandstorm for a week. By some miracle they managed to live through it, though I doubt they'll ever be the same. At any rate, they don't remember anything that happened in that week's time, nor even touching the relic in the first place. I found out that the one man that did not get caught up in the storm hated the other two. They never said, but it's distinctly possible that he was working separately of his own accord from the two men. He acted as though he despised them. Given they were competing for the relics it makes sense. I digress.

'The phenomenon might shed some light on the cat statue, which in the church days of old was strongly bound by romantic feelings. Now I for one would find it difficult to quantify that, at least for the purposes of sound data. But if I had a pair of willing test subjects, maybe a group of married couples, I might be able to put the notion through its paces. But after what happened with the three thieves, the university is wary of testing it out.'”

Rose paused and dropped the book. The Doctor didn't give her any time to really ponder what they'd just read before he turned around and nudged her bare belly. She looked down and met a warm gaze. Though feline, it was still so reminiscent of his smile. The Doctor smiled for a good many reasons, sometimes when he pitied her. Given what Rose had gathered about “strongly bound by romantic feelings,” she concluded that this had to be what he pitied her for. It made perfect sense. It would be such a dreadful lie to even suggest that she hadn't considered how she felt about the Doctor. Now he knew how she felt about him at least. Silly human, fancying an almighty Time Lord. Who was she kidding?

Rose was torn from her ruminations by the Doctor voicing his opinion on the matter. He nudged her and meowed at her continuously until he had her attention. When he briefly managed to catch her attention he peeled his ears back and offered her a hushed mewl. Though she'd gotten better at communicating with his feline persona, he had her lost this time.

“Doesn't mean anything,” Rose defended. He replied by leaning over to nip at her arm. “Ow! Well, if we're accepting it all as fact then it means we'll forget all of this anyway. It sounds like our only choice is to wait this out, since she didn't mention doing anything to reverse the effects of the storm.” The Doctor gave her his approval of this idea with a few shallow purrs into her belly. “So... what, go back to the TARDIS? Run away? That sounds like a dreadful idea, Doctor, when we could help these people. Look what happened to their city...” The Doctor reached for her arm again, but she yanked it away. “Don't tell me these events are fixed points in time. If that's true then our being here already messes it all up, doesn't it? Isn't that why you were so eager to get out of here?”

He merely stared up at her, eyes just as stormy as they were when he tore into her for rescuing her dad. She loathed those eyes, feared them. She'd come close to telling him that she loved him that day, to those threatening eyes. She found them that much more terrifying when they looked just as heartbroken as they did angry. Maybe it was good that they were going to forget all this. Rose couldn't put the burden of her emotions on an already fragile pair of hearts. And maybe he was of sound mind. But if this day proved anything, it was that he was still hurting inside. Was he even ready to open up to someone, especially a young woman like herself? All of the questions and uncertainties left Rose's head spinning.

Rose had a whole week to think about it and what became of the Alnaians while stuck on the TARDIS. Some emergency protocol – that much to her amazement actually worked – got them safely back into the Vortex. But they couldn't fly anywhere else with the Doctor stuck in feline form. The week passed by painfully slowly, but by the end it all felt like a blur. Rose spent most of it familiarizing herself with the less visited corners of the vast TARDIS library with the Doctor limping at her heels and curling up beside her on the couch. She couldn't say that she was lonely with him around for most hours of the day. But the one-sided conversations wore on her sanity day by day. And every time she looked into his eyes she was reminded that he _knew_ how she felt about him, what she wasn't ready to tell him. Maybe, she considered, that was why he followed her around. Was he hoping she'd actually open up and tell him? He had to know she wasn't going to tell him while he was a cat. That wasn't happening, if she ever worked up the courage.

That is, if she remembered she needed the courage.

The Doctor burst into the Rose's room seven days after their quick trip to Alnaia, half naked mind, with a heartwarming, gleeful grin spread across his face. “Rose, I remember! I remember!” he shouted into the rafters with raised arms, almost as though he was thanking some mysterious deity or praising his incredible luck. But for what?

“Remember what, Doctor?”

And as if she'd said something perilously wrong, the sweet smile that the Doctor had warmly greeted her with fell from his face and was replaced with a sort of broken frown. A cold chill iced over her. Something was amiss, but she couldn't place it.

 

\--------

 

Rose shot up in bed. She easily could have been drowning in her cold sweat and dull headache. The darkness of the room wrapped around her, practically choked her addled mind and weary eyes. Sitting calmly for a moment did nothing to help her gather her bearings. All that helped was a calm little drawl of a meow from beside her. She looked down to find a brown fluffy creature licking his paw and combing back his fur with it. The Doctor, of course. When he met eyes with her he flopped onto his back and meowed at her again. She guessed it was a suggestion to lie back down. Instead, she held her arms out to him, which he crawled right into and climbed up to nestle himself between her chest and arms.

“I remember, Doctor. I remember now,” Rose puffed in a strangled breath. “What happened in Alnaia. I remember. I'm so sorry.”

The question that now remained was what was she sorry for? Sorry for having him turned into a cat? Sorry for then forcing him to endure the ravages of war? Sorry for not telling him how she felt when she so easily could have if she'd just been a bit braver? Sorry for leaving him to remember it all by himself? The Doctor seemed to have this same question, pulling his head back to search her eyes. But she couldn't give him an answer. She opened her mouth, but all that came out at first were little squeaks and croaks, nothing intelligible.

“Since it happened again... I... at least you know I still love you,” Rose murmured into his thick down of belly fur.

The words streamed from her mouth to his little ears like a river after a spring rain. Just when she thought it'd been easy, she realized she was trembling while trying to hold him close. She hiccuped and kissed his neck, tasting just a hint of crisp sourness coupled with sandalwood. It should have calmed her down as it did before she fell asleep. But it only sent her senses and her imagination reeling. He began purring, and Rose closed her eyes for a moment to soak it all in.

“I love you,” she whispered on a warm breath. She felt his purring grow louder and slower as his eyes fluttered shut. “And I don't want to forget that I've told you. It's not fair.” Again, he started purring even louder, almost as if to hush her. “I can't just let it go, Doctor. What am I supposed to do with these few days knowing I'm going to forget them?”

If she thought the Doctor was going to let her get away with those words, she was sorely mistaken. Later that morning he dragged her out of bed and had her sneak him into a bagel shop. Rose managed to convince the shop owner that the Doctor was her service cat, and he gorged himself on bagels. That was how a good bit of the week passed, seeing how many places Rose could sneak the Doctor into. She even managed to get him into the science museum. Still, the days wound down, whether Rose was ready for it or not. They passed without her permission, to her dismay.

After the third day, Rose began telling him that she loved him every day. So then at least if she forgot it all he'd have something to go by, something to hold on to. And the thought might have seemed so conceited if he hadn't brought her into a tight cuddle after every time she said it. She chose to believe it wasn't a coincidence, chose to believe in the Doctor. They'd been through too much together for her to not trust him simply because he wasn't in his right body. Only a year, maybe a year and change, had passed since the first time the Doctor found himself in this predicament. But in that time a lot had changed between them. They'd both grown. She couldn't be certain if the Doctor was ready that first time or not, but Rose did know that she wasn't. Though she trusted him, felt safe with him, knew him so much better, none of it mattered, Rose thought bitterly. She was going to forget it all anyway, forget that she was ready to share with him.

They filed back into the TARDIS a couple hours early. Rose wanted to retreat into her bedroom where she could further feel sorry for herself, but the Doctor wouldn't let her. He had her follow him into a little parlor near the console room to catch a quick kip with him bundled up in her arms. She hated that it helped calm her down. His purring had become a comfort she couldn't live without in the past few days. She'd even gotten used to his habit of affectionately grooming her before she fell asleep. The Doctor had always been a comforting presence, so really Rose shouldn't have been so baffled to find that he knew just how to soothe her even when trapped in a different body.

When the time came for the Doctor to change, Rose found his clothes and piled them up on the couch while she disappeared into the console room. But the Doctor followed her. He dove beneath the console and reappeared a few minutes later, helplessly meowing as he had on his first day for her to help him up. This time he had a camera in his mouth.

“Oh, Doctor, brilliant idea!” Rose praised as she set it up on a timer.

She imagined him mentally kicking himself for not realizing sooner. No matter now, she told herself. It _had_ to work. Rose refused to put the Doctor through her loss of memory again. It wasn't fair to him, not after all they'd been through. One week mattered, even if it all happened because she'd been too nosy. She didn't want to give it or the memories of him back. They were hers to keep, and as Rose cuddled him close for the photo, she kept this in mind. She hoped and prayed it would be enough. The TARDIS was counting down the minutes in bold red letters on one of the monitors. They had just enough time to get it printed. And with one minute left left Rose scrawled a message for herself on the back of the photo in permanent marker. The Doctor purred his approval.

“D'you think it'll work, Doctor?” Rose asked as he jumped down the floor and headed towards the parlor. Her heart was hammering at her chest at breakneck speed in anticipation.

He looked back at her with a twitching tail and a canted head. All he could do was meow at her. And who knew what he wanted to say? Something to assuage her fears, a thinly veiled attempt as always. This wasn't a time for it, and they both knew it. They had about thirty seconds to wait and see. Rose waved just before he disappeared into the parlor. She plopped down on the jump seat clutching the photo for dear life. For that brief little moment they both looked so happy. The Doctor even sported a sort of Cheshire smile, wicked, as if he knew something she didn't. Maybe it was a facade as always, a front to put up for her. She'd be lying if she said she didn't need it.

Need it? Need what? Rose grimaced and scratched her head in a sigh. What on Earth had she been thinking about? A wave of dread washed over her as it always did when she'd forgotten something. And this one buzzed gooseflesh across her skin, so it must have been important. Just as she was trying to wrack her brain to remember, the Doctor burst out of the parlor with that same purposeful, nearly stormy look wrinkling his face. His hedgehog hair even stood on end, and his suit was all wrinkled as if it had been laying on his bedroom floor for days. He strode across the console room in a few steps. His potent presence had her sinking down into the jump seat. But he tugged her out of it and pulled something from her hands she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

“Look at this for me, Rose,” he commanded in a low tone that had a shiver rocketing up her spine.

Rose took the photo from his hands and studied it. It was a picture of her with a cat. Funnily enough she was wearing the same outfit. And the cat looked so eerily familiar, definitely one of the more handsome felines she'd ever seen. She'd certainly seen a lot roaming around the Powell Estate. None of them held a candle to the sly grin and fluffy tabby fur that this one had. Odd that she'd have a cat on the TARDIS, Rose thought as she spied the time rotor in the background. She'd think the Doctor would hate it. He hated cats. She turned over the photo hoping it would provide her with any additional clues. And did it ever.

In her own handwriting a little message was hastily scribbled in marker on the back. “21 November, 2007. 15:28. The Doctor and me.” Rose clapped her hand over her mouth and looked up at the Doctor, who took a step closer to gently grab it and thread his fingers with hers. She couldn't recall ever seeing such an expression of desperation and hope that she found herself swimming in as she searched him for clues. He nodded down at the photo again, and croaked through his bobbing adam's apple that there was more. Indeed, in the corner, a heart had been drawn, and in the middle of it read, “He knows.”

“Remember, Rose,” the Doctor pleaded as he tossed the photo onto the jump seat to grab her other hand. His hands were icy cold, sucking all the warmth from hers as he squeezed the life from them. “Please remember, Rose. That's all I ask. There's something I need to tell you, and it would be _so_ much easier if you rem-”

“I love you!” She blurted out.

“Oi you! That's my line. It was my turn this time,” he chided.

“Tough,” Rose squeaked.

The Doctor chuckled in a sigh and brought his face closer to hers. For a heartbeat she almost felt his whiskers tickling her cheeks. But it was his stubble and his nose brushing hers. It was a very real pair of lips that tentatively brushed hers. They asked her if it was okaywith a gentle greeting, a brief taste of the little bit of salt on their soft flesh before he pulled away. She answered full force, swinging her arms around his neck and pressing her body to his. He took it as a hint and offered her more. What began as another gentle meeting continued with unbridled confidence, a claiming nibble, and ended with a trail of kisses down her jaw and neck, complete with a trembling sigh. His head fell to her shoulder, and he muffled a couple of whimpers into it.

“I was afraid it wouldn't work,” the Doctor confessed.

“I remember,” she reassured him, and braced herself as they fell back into the jump seat.

He brought her into his lap, a welcome comfort after their week. “I waited, Rose. All week. Rassilon, it was a long wait,” he hugged her close and pecked her cheek. “To tell you I love you too.”

She'd felt it in his purrs, cuddles, and cat kisses. She even felt it in the real man's kisses that she'd just been treated with. But to hear him say the words, Rose's chest swelled. She brought her lips to his again, threading her fingers into his glossy hair, letting his stubble and sideburns graze her palm. With each taste, every cool pass of his lips on hers, Rose's heart trembled and rocked against her chest that much harder. When she freed his lips again he chuckled against her cheek and beamed.

“No more cat statue, eh?” he teased.

“I don't think we need it anymore, Doctor.”

He arched a brow even as he nudged her head to reach her neck for a few more pecks there. Rose took a deep breath and sighed.

“What're you talking about, Rose?”

“Well, think about it. The researcher's journal said the cat relic was strongly bound by romantic feelings, love. And Maya mentioned it was used by couples about to be married. D'you think maybe it was what we needed? Come on, if you didn't believe it you wouldn't have been reading her journal in the first place, right?”

The Doctor hummed and moved his head to the other side of her neck and planted a few kisses there. He was paying attention, and Rose gasped into his spiky tresses. But he was having his fun while thinking, she mused.

“Could be,” he finally replied. “Regardless, I've got all that I need now.” He nuzzled her nose.

“Yeah?” she teased against his lips.

“Yes,” he hissed.

That was the day the Doctor asked Rose how long she would stay with him. Her reply came with a smile, and straight from the heart. No more forgetting, she told herself as she offered him, “Forever.”

 


End file.
